Unattainable Mirage
Sunny had gone through many chilling trials in his tumultuous life, but the Nightmare Desert was, perhaps, the most harrowing ordeal of them all. Lost in a true Death Zone, pursued by a Great Nightmare Creature, and running out of time… he saw little hope of making it out of this tribulation alive.
Nevertheless, there were two paths he could take.
The first one was to follow Morgan to the Tomb of Ariel, and the second one was to follow Mordret into the Third Nightmare.
Both paths were equally lethal and veiled in uncertainty, making it hard for him to choose.
In the end, Sunny made the most prudent decision — he postponed making a choice by a few days.
After all, there was a time limit set by Morgan in her daring attempt to reach the black pyramid. Four days… if they did not arrive at the daemon's tomb in four days, Summer Knight was going to take her back to the waking world, leaving the rest of them behind.
So, Sunny was going to put his hopes in the Princess of War, and if she failed to accomplish her goal, he would answer Mordret's invitation and follow the only remaining path into a Seed of Nightmare.
The Prince of Nothing was not very happy with the delay, but he had no other choice except to agree with Sunny and wait patiently. He really needed the strength of Changing Star's cohort if he was to challenge a Third Nightmare… especially one that he knew nothing about, and would be entering without any preparations.
Masters were the best of the best among the warriors of humanity — unlike Awakened, who had no choice but to face the trials of the Spell and survive them, each Master had chosen to venture into their Second Nightmares voluntarily. Only the strongest and most resourceful survived and Ascended.
And out of those strongest, hundreds and hundreds had attempted the Third Nightmare in the last few decades. Yet… only a few dozen humans returned, thus becoming Saints.
That alone spoke about how deadly the Third Nightmare was.
Needless to say, Sunny was not very enthusiastic about venturing into the Third Nightmare at the ripe age of twenty. Maybe if he was a titan with seven fully saturated cores and another decade of experience behind his shoulders, he would consider it. But now…
He desperately hoped that Mordret was either lying or wrong, and that Morgan would be able to lead them to the black pyramid. Having to make a deal with the Prince of Nothing was the worst-case scenario.
'Gods. How did I end up being forced to put all my hopes in these two?'
The Valor siblings were the last people in two worlds he wanted to associate with.
And yet, here he was.
…Worse still, with each hour and every day that passed, it was starting to look more and more as if Mordret had been telling the truth.
Led by Morgan and Sir Gilead, the small group of survivors was moving deeper and deeper into the desert. They were constantly assaulted by torturous heat, which sapped them of all energy, will, and desire to live. The suffocating nature of the pristine sea of dunes had only affected them physically at first, but as time went on, its cruelty started to gnaw on their minds, as well.
It did not help that none of them could really sleep, gripped by the fear of the cataclysmic battle that raged across the ancient desert at night. The further into the dunes they went, the more terrifying creatures would rise from the sands to wage war on each other. The ruins they sheltered in shook and groaned, seemingly ready to collapse at any moment.
There were more broken structures buried in the sand in the inner regions of the desert, but at the same time, less and less of them looked durable enough to withstand the fury of the eternal battle.
At the same time, the Nightmare Creatures they were forced to fight during the day were becoming more and more powerful. At first, Sir Gilead alone was enough to deal with them. Later, the valiant Saint would struggle to fend off the most dire abominations without the help of the Ascended.
Finally, there came a time when even Summer Knight became wary of their opponents. The group was forced to tread with utmost caution, lest they encounter something that neither the Saint nor the Masters would be able to kill.
That slowed them down considerably.
…And slowing down allowed the Gate Guardian — Skinwalker — to find their trail again.
They were still being pursued, and as time went on, the constant need to escape that pursuit was only growing more urgent. There were two reasons why the great abomination was getting harder and harder to avoid.
The first one was that Sunny and the rest could not allow themselves to move forward as swiftly as they had before. The second was that… the creature was learning.
The Skinwalker had access to the memories of the corpses it possessed, and through those memories, it was quickly learning about the waking world, the Awakened, about the powers they possessed, and about the way they thought. At first, it had only been able to study the memories of several dozen vessels that it had hunted down and taken in the desert, so the process was relatively slow.
But the creature had most likely escaped into the waking world, as well. How many vessels of the great abomination were there in Antarctica by now? Hundreds? Thousands?
...Millions?
Sunny did not know, but he felt that every time they had to escape from the Skinwalker's pursuit, it was rapidly becoming harder and harder to shake the abomination off.
Everyone was… tired.
Everyone was spent, battered, frightened, and slowly starting to fall into despair. The gauntlet of the Nightmare Desert was just too cruel, too harrowing, and too hopeless.
And worst of all, despite it all, the ominous silhouette of the black pyramid seemed just as distant as it had been at the start of their arduous journey.
Even Morgan, who had never allowed herself to show doubt or weakness before, was looking less and less indomitable with each passing day. The perfectly maintained facade of a fearless princess of the great clan was coming undone, revealing the face of a brave and ambitious, but ultimately fallible and human young woman.
She was spent, battered, frightened, and desperate too.
The difference was…
Morgan still had a way out. While the rest of them didn't.
Just like that, the fourth day arrived — once it passed, they would have been in the desert for a full week.
Emerging from an underground ruin, the members of the group shielded their eyes from the blinding sun and looked at the distant, unattainable mirage of the Tomb of Ariel.
Sunny's face was grim.
'Mordret said that it is impossible to reach the pyramid… but he is wrong. Asterion was unable to get to it, but someone else did. The sybils… they reached it. They even went inside. So there's still a chance.'
Morgan's face was motionless. Her eyes were sunken and tired, but still burning with sharpness. There was no hint of being dulled in their vermilion abyss.
Grimacing, she took a step forward and said hoarsely:
"Come. We have not failed yet."
